I have fallen behind for a couple of reasons and would like to start off by explaining them a little bit:
1 : Me and my collaborator Miu (owner of fashion brand Still House) has been communicating constantly about the collaboration, but in the span of around 3 weeks, we haven’t came to a conclusion and that it took us some exploring to have came to agree on a direction.
Reflecting upon the time spent thinking about 3 individual topics, I think that I should have been a lot more stern and have recognised that 3 scenarios were being discussed at once. I’m super glad that Miu was really helpful and involved a lot in to the process along the way.
2 : After the college I worked for did not continue my contract, there was a period of time in October when my bank account was close to $0 after last month’s rent was paid. I was lucky enough to have landed some long-term parttime gigs but they are not paying right away. During that financial instability I put in a lot of effort in to obtaining design work in the past weeks and started crawling back with deposites being paid by clients. Fortunately I am doing extremely well now and am glad that the rough couple of weeks are over.
I have commited in documenting every move and meeting with my collaborator, but since it took some time to identify a clear direction, I think it was difficult for me to follow the pace of the course as it went on, but thankfully the clouds and mists cleared up and now, I hope that the following blog posts will be able to state my intensions, progress and efforts fully.
WEEK 6
Made in Hong Kong
As I said, Miu has hired me as a graphic designer for Still House and that we have met up at least 8 times in the past 4 weeks. Refering back to week 5, we first picured a campaign that would promote made in Hong Kong products, but that quickly did not gain momentum because there does exist too many HK brands big and small, such as Red A plastics, Lee Kung Man clothing, SaoTao noodles, Top Soya foods, Leung So Kee umbrella etc.
I produce a tag for Miu’s clothing which is being printed at the moment, but for other brands to bear this tag we concluded that it will take a lot of negotiating and knocking on doors before any actual work could commence, and when we want to include all of Hong Kong, the scale is not managable in the span of a short 8 weeks ; we both want the results to be real and has a better chance of being applied.
MAPPING SMALL LOCAL BUSINESSES
A short clip of Miu and I walking around Causeway Bay
The other thing which we discussed was to make a map to locate small local businesses, and on November 7th, we both took a walk around Causeway Bay to roughly locate all the shops that we find fitting, the walk took us around 2 hours to complete and afterwards we sat down for a small lunch, reflecting on which shops would fit in to our list of (as mentioned in week 6):
- Scale : store size, number of staff, backing or funding
- Pricing : of items and products
- Own Branding : majority of products bearing a name which belongs to the owner
- Uniqueness : businesses that push’s the boundaries and adapts to the ever changing market
- Community Value : to have a positive impact towards the located area or HK in general
and yet we both came to agree that MOST shops are on Haven Street, and that only around 3 outside of Haven St. we found fitting to our requirements. Naturally our attention were brought back to Haven Street.
HAVEN STREET : Awarness & Promotion
Miu has actually approached his neighboring shops about the idea of a map before this project has begun and was met with an amount of interest, in hearing that response I instantly though to myself that these shop owners on Haven Street are opened minded for some change or awareness.
So the date now is November 11th, I have called Miu for a meeting at Still House, and as I was on a 45 minute ride to Caueway Bay after work, it then first occured to me that I needed to focus on 1 thing to work on! I took out a piece of paper and started to:
Brain stroming ideas to promote and improve Haven Street, they are:
Street Mall POP for flyers/ guide membership offering discounts signage indicating stores that are part of this “association” provide lockers for shoppers more benches for shoppers (Causeway Bay is infamous for a lack of seating on shopping sprees) website with shop listing & spendings calculator regular exhibitions, seminars and talks
I also prepared some questions for Miu to see what could come out of these, including:
What is support (supporting local, supporting Haven St.)? Could the hall inside of Haven Court be used for events? Is Haven Street providing enough variety of things to do? What kind of an audience would you like to attract? Do you think people would think it is expensive to shop at Haven St.?
INTERVIEW RESULTS & CONCLUSIONS:
Having came up with the determination to square down on a topic on the bus ride to Still House, I made the mistake of not having arranged my brain stormed points prior the interview, but the interview itself did end up going smoothly, the round up of this interview is in this slide presentation, which is my:
WEEK 6 WORKSHOP CHALLENGE : SLIDE PRESENTATION
As for the ideas I brain stormed to increase foot traffic and awareness of Heaven Street, the following were approved and elaborated with Miu:
1: Branding of the “Haven Street association” (un-named).
2: P.O.P. at the front of the street to distribute reading material related to “Haven Street association”.
3: To set up lockers on Heaven Street or inside Heaven Court to able a comfortable day of shopping, this could also help encourage shoppers in CWB to drop by Heaven Street.
4: Increase the amount of seating outside of shops for people to enjoy a coffee and take a breather, to enjoy the peacefulness of Heaven Street.
5: Website with a “spendings calculator”, offering a combination of individual items or meals offered by Haven St.’s restaurants and shops at a desired and could help determine how much one will be spending. Listing out all shops that are part of the “Haven Street association”, mailbox etc.
6: Regular schedueled events : exhibitions, block parties/silent discos, markets, talks and seminars.
7: A coaching/advice programme for people interested in starting their own business or shop, as far as techniques of designing clothes or being a tattoo artist, appointments could be reserved with the talents of Haven Street to have a friendly chat in-shop or on the benches outside of Haven Street’s shops.
INSPIRATION & EXISTING REFERENCES
Lee Garden’s Association
Now ill have to wind back the clock to 1 year ago when Miu was approached by a representative from the Lee Garden Associates, Miu did not know what they wanted from him and so he asked me to join meeting.
We were told that the association has built a relationship with around 30 shops in Causeway Bay and are determined to promote them, Miu first proposed the idea of a map to them and that the representative first found the idea interesting. Before she left after the meeting was done, I thought that there is more that could be done in improving the association, and so I told Miu I was gonna make a pitch to the association to see what might happen. The pitch was made and the story ended up with them having said a couple of nice things back and we have not heard from them since.
BUT what was done and suggested in the proposal and the Lee Garden’s Association has made Miu think about taking matters in to our own hands, to benefit friends and talents of our own with simular methods. So I think it all started with the Lee Garden’s Association incident.
The result of the final outcome could shall be packaged in a proposal just like the pitch handed over to Lee Garden’s Association, and that it was agreed upon that having such a booklet in hand would make talking to the interested parties at Haven Street a lot smoother.
HK Food Works
Although based on food produce, I think this site is in efforts of drawing attention to something local and is in nature an issue that does not come across the minds of most Hong Kong citizens, which is closely related to the kind of awareness Miu and I are trying to draw towards Haven Street.
One of the person in charge of this project is Sherin Siew, Associate Design Director (UX/UI) at FITCH (check’em out her related work here : szs.io). I think the amount of data provided reguarding food production, distribution & consumption is plentiful and clearly laid out in a easy to read template, a good direction for the website for the “Haven Street Association”.
Blue House
The Blue House is a 100 year old heritage grade building in Wan Chai (right next to Causeway Bay). The house was commonly known to have been painted blue during a shooting of a film featuring local celebrity Kelly Chan in the 90s, and now it has become a land mark to it’s surrounding area and has since led the transformation of it’s surrounding area in to a cultural gathering spot, leading the overall development Wan Chai in to a hip district.
The Viva Blue House project can be described as a self-sustaining housing project, as in people with certain skills to offer are selected to live inside of this building, running workshops, shops and activities in maintaining this historical building, revitalizing it with activity promoting : culture, environmental awareness. As they put it : Bottom-up, community led collaborations.
Aside from the general branding, the positive impression it leaves the public and the depth of the project itself, the above link desribing the architecture is a great UX reference for setting up the introdution of Haven Street’s shops.
ANDY WAS HERE
ANDY was here 🤓 